Council shelves jetty rentals

By Graham Skellern
The Bay's regional council has suddenly dropped a plan to charge owners of coastal structures such as private jetties, boat ramps and moorings.
Environment Bay of Plenty - which had been working on the proposal for two years - found it would be too difficult to introduce under existing laws.
The council had prepared a schedule of charges for coastal structures and it was out for public consultation as part of the deliberations on their Ten Year Plan.
But at a meeting in Wellington on Monday, the chairpersons of all regional councils decided they wanted further clarification from the Government about introducing coastal occupation charges.
They want a ruling on whether port companies should pay both a coastal charge and rates and they want government agencies to take a greater role in setting fair and equitable charges to ensure a national consistency.
Environment BOP's strategic policy committee yesterday backed the moves - deciding not to proceed with its coastal rental plan "at this time due to unresolved issues and uncertainty in the legislation as it stands".
The committee did, however, support the principle that all occupiers of the coast who gained private benefit to the exclusion of the public should pay a rental fee.
John Cronin, Environment BOP chairman, said the legislation (in the Resource Management Act) was fatally flawed and it was up to the Government to sort it out before asking local authorities to put it into effect.
"The position of the ports is unclear. Even the definition of coastal occupation charges is unclear. We could be liable to appeals and spend years in the Environment Court - at a big cost," said Mr Cronin.
Bill Bayfield, Environment BOP chief executive, said it was a difficult package to put together and "we came as near, damn it, to making it work. I doubt whether we will see coastal charges in their present form."
In her report to the strategic policy committee, senior environmental planner Aileen Lawrie said there were principled reasons for coastal occupation charges but the charges needed to be fairly and equally applied on the basis of public exclusion and not on historical events leading to the approval to occupy part of the coast.
She said it was not impossible to implement the charges but government support had been noticeably absent during preliminary consultation carried out over the last six months and it was understood officials were considering legislative changes.
Cr Raewyn Bennett was disappointed the coastal rental plan was pulled while it was out for public consultation.
"In all debates we said we had to introduce a charging regime. A vocal minority of moneyed people have won the day; I don't know how democratic that is.
"If the Crown says the seabed belongs to everyone why are we favouring just a few. The charges were a way of developing a culture to remind people that the seabed isn't a private property right. If you want to use it then you have to pay for it," said Mrs Bennett.
Under the proposed plan, the owner of a 20sq m private jetty in Tauranga would have paid an annual charge of $462 or $400 for a mooring and $616 for a 20sq m boatshed.
Environment BOP was intending to collect more than $1 million a year - and Mr Cronin said it was even unclear whether the council had to hand over that revenue to the Department of Conservation or Ministry for the Environment for coastal marine activity.
Port of Tauranga and the city's two marinas - which opposed the plan - would between them contribute more than 80 per cent of the revenue because of the amount of coastal space they took up.
The Environment BOP committee received an opinion from Alan Galbraith QC that only a court or legislative change could provide a definite answer on whether the port could be charged.
The port had argued that it already had a consent to solely occupy the space the wharves were over, and also the area alongside where the ships berth.
Coastal rents had been charged by the old harbour boards for more than 40 years but they stopped after the local body reform in 1989. Environment BOP took over many of the functions of the harbour board in 1991 but it joined other regional councils in refusing to collect a rent because the money was leaving their areas.
The Resource Management Act was amended in 1997 so the revenue collected stayed in the region, and the act also specified that in the first coastal plan change made after 2007 regional councils must state whether they were introducing a charging regime.